Benjamin Balke

TL;DR: In this Review, the most important developments in the field of spintronics are described from the point of view of materials science.

TL;DR: In this paper, the structure, the origin of the band gap and the functionalities of semiconducting half-Heusler compounds are reviewed. But the authors focus on the magnetic properties of the half-heusler compound.

Abstract: The transport properties of magnetic tunnel junctions with different (110)-textured Heusler alloy electrodes such as Co2MnSi, Co2FeSi or Co2Mn0.5Fe0.5Si, AlOx barrier, and Co–Fe counterelectrode are investigated. The bandstructure of Co2Mn1−xFexSi is predicted to show a systematic shift in the position of the Fermi energy EF through the gap in the minority density of states while the composition changes from Co2MnSi toward Co2FeSi. Although this shift is indirectly observed by x-ray photoemission spectroscopy, all junctions show a large spin polarization of around 70% at the Heusler alloy/Al–O interface and are characterized by a very similar temperature and bias voltage dependence of the tunnel magnetoresistance. This suggests that these transport properties of these junctions are dominated by inelastic excitations and not by the electronic bandstructure.

TL;DR: In this paper, the effects of optimizing the thermoelectric figure of merit, zT, by controlling the doping level were investigated. But the effect of the doping on the performance of PbTe was not considered.

TL;DR: In this article, the electronic, magnetic, and structural properties of the binary compound Mn3Ga were investigated and it was found that the material is hard magnetic with an energy product of Hc×Br=52.5kJm−3 and an average saturation magnetization of about 0.25μB∕at at 5K.